Efforts to reform public schooling in America are pervasive and constant. Public schools effect a large percentage of the population, for whom they serve for several years. Ravitch argues that our schools are an important engine for providing a high quality education, fostering equity, and preserving our democracy.
As scholars, professionals, parents, and citizens, we are wise to develop an informed and nuanced understanding of schools and school reform efforts. Since many of us have been influenced by many different teachers in many classroom and school settings, it is sometimes difficult to move past what we consider "common sense" to think about reform efforts with a critical eye towards the trade-offs and "unintended" consequences that policies often produce. To do this, it can be helpful to try to understand the ideas and arguments of scholars in the field.
In this project, you are challenged to wrap your head around one issue facing our public school system, synthesize research and opinion that address this issue, and teach the rest of us what we need to know to refine our understandings of the importance of this issue locally and beyond. We'll start the process by choosing an issue and drafting a proposal for the scope of your research. Once you've received feedback and refined your proposal, you will develop a web-based resource that summarizes and synthesizes your knowledge about this issue. Finally, you will take this background knowledge into a group to teach the rest of the class about your topic. Our guiding question for this project will be:
What are some critical ideas that local and national policy makers shouldconsider when developing their principles for school reform?
Process
1. Brainstorm guiding questions for your research
Before we think about our research, it might help to have some questions we can all choose from to structure our research and our thinking. When you begin your research, you should decide among these questions to structure report.
2. Develop a proposal describing the scope of your research.
Each participant in the class will adopt an issue with the intention of synthesizing across several sources and eventually teaching us how this issue should affect our understandings of schools and school reform. Since our class is so short, it may not be possible to address every aspect of your issue that you might find interesting. The first step in our project, then, is to define your scope of work. To do this, you should include answers to the following five questions in a proposal for your research:
a. Describe the issue that you wish to adopt.
b. Explain why this issue is important for the nation, Rhode Island, and to you personally.
c. Decide on at least five questions that you feel should be included in your synthesis.
d. List some possible sources for your research.
You can use the links below to develop your proposals:
3. Conduct Research; Synthesize across your sources to address important questions.
Develop your individual research page as an enhanced annotated bibliography. This page should include:
A Title
A description of your issue, including a description of the issue and why it is important in American Public Education
Mini-reviews of at least five articles that you read. For each article, you should include
A bibliographical entry for the article in APA style.
A one paragraph summary of the article.
A one paragraph reaction to the article. This is where you include your thoughts about the article.
The articles should include at least one scholarly article, a reputable newspaper article, an editorial, and two articles additional articles of your choosing.
So what is the "enhanced" part of the annotated bibliography? I am not sure, but I would like you to be able to represent the articles that are relevant to your issue that you have been accumulating throughout the course in your PKB without writing a summary for each one. This is what we decided on as a class:
What are some natural groupings based on our interests? This is how we grouped ourselves in teams:
What should each person contribute to our knowledge around their adopted book?
What should each group include on their synthesis page?
How should each group address the project's driving question?
Here is what we decided was reasonable to include on our team pages:
5. Synthesize your research within a team to produce a "related issues" resource.
Design your own team page. At minimum, it should include:
An introduction paragraph that explains what follows on the page.
Links to each team member's individual page.
One synthesis paragraph for each person on your team. These synthesis topics should be informed (and contributed to) by all team members' research. One team member will be responsible for each of these paragraphs as lead editor.
Introduction
Efforts to reform public schooling in America are pervasive and constant. Public schools effect a large percentage of the population, for whom they serve for several years. Ravitch argues that our schools are an important engine for providing a high quality education, fostering equity, and preserving our democracy.
As scholars, professionals, parents, and citizens, we are wise to develop an informed and nuanced understanding of schools and school reform efforts. Since many of us have been influenced by many different teachers in many classroom and school settings, it is sometimes difficult to move past what we consider "common sense" to think about reform efforts with a critical eye towards the trade-offs and "unintended" consequences that policies often produce. To do this, it can be helpful to try to understand the ideas and arguments of scholars in the field.
In this project, you are challenged to wrap your head around one issue facing our public school system, synthesize research and opinion that address this issue, and teach the rest of us what we need to know to refine our understandings of the importance of this issue locally and beyond. We'll start the process by choosing an issue and drafting a proposal for the scope of your research. Once you've received feedback and refined your proposal, you will develop a web-based resource that summarizes and synthesizes your knowledge about this issue. Finally, you will take this background knowledge into a group to teach the rest of the class about your topic. Our guiding question for this project will be:
What are some critical ideas that local and national policy makers shouldconsider when developing their principles for school reform?
Process
1. Brainstorm guiding questions for your research
Before we think about our research, it might help to have some questions we can all choose from to structure our research and our thinking. When you begin your research, you should decide among these questions to structure report.2. Develop a proposal describing the scope of your research.
Each participant in the class will adopt an issue with the intention of synthesizing across several sources and eventually teaching us how this issue should affect our understandings of schools and school reform. Since our class is so short, it may not be possible to address every aspect of your issue that you might find interesting. The first step in our project, then, is to define your scope of work. To do this, you should include answers to the following five questions in a proposal for your research:a. Describe the issue that you wish to adopt.
b. Explain why this issue is important for the nation, Rhode Island, and to you personally.
c. Decide on at least five questions that you feel should be included in your synthesis.
d. List some possible sources for your research.
You can use the links below to develop your proposals:
3. Conduct Research; Synthesize across your sources to address important questions.
Develop your individual research page as an enhanced annotated bibliography. This page should include:
- A Title
- A description of your issue, including a description of the issue and why it is important in American Public Education
- Mini-reviews of at least five articles that you read. For each article, you should include
- A bibliographical entry for the article in APA style.
- A one paragraph summary of the article.
- A one paragraph reaction to the article. This is where you include your thoughts about the article.
The articles should include at least one scholarly article, a reputable newspaper article, an editorial, and two articles additional articles of your choosing.So what is the "enhanced" part of the annotated bibliography? I am not sure, but I would like you to be able to represent the articles that are relevant to your issue that you have been accumulating throughout the course in your PKB without writing a summary for each one. This is what we decided on as a class:
Links for your pages are here:
4. Form Teaching Teams
- What should each person contribute to our knowledge around their adopted book?
- What should each group include on their synthesis page?
- How should each group address the project's driving question?
Here is what we decided was reasonable to include on our team pages:5. Synthesize your research within a team to produce a "related issues" resource.
6. Finalize Issue Pages: Due Thursday 7/24.
7. Teach-In!